Buick Grand National 1987 plus “T” type and the GNX

Buick spent most of the 1980s making comfortable sedans and then, in its final year, built a turbocharged six-cylinder that ran a 13.2-second quarter and beat V8s that cost far more. The 1987 Grand National and the 547 GNX units that followed it were the last of the line, assembled in part by an outside performance house, and factory rated at a number almost nobody believed. Read on for what separated a WE4 from a GNX, and what a $35 option got you.

There is a familiar pattern in the car business where a model gets progressively worse until it quietly disappears. This is the opposite of that. The Buick Grand National ran on the Regal platform from 1982 through 1987, and the final year was the fastest, the most desirable, and the one that ended with the factory extending production into November just to keep up with the orders. Then, in the same year, Buick pulled 547 cars off the assembly line and sent them somewhere else entirely for modifications that had nothing to do with normal automobile manufacturing. The horsepower rating on the finished product was almost certainly a lie, and everyone involved knew it.

Buick Saved the Best for Absolute Last

Visually, the 1987 Grand National looks much like the previous few years: a study in black, inside and out, with only some minor grille modifications separating it from its predecessors. That visual continuity hides an unusually complicated order sheet. Buick built 27,590 Turbo Regal models in 1987, and of those, 1,547 units carried the lighter WE4 package, sold as the Turbo T. On top of that, options were mixed and matched to a degree that produces genuinely strange survivors. It is entirely possible to encounter a Landau Limited with a vinyl roof wearing the LC2 turbo option hood bulge, which is a combination that makes no sense on paper and existed in the real world anyway.

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Aluminum Where Nobody Would Ever Look

The WE4 package is the one most people misunderstand. It differed from the standard Grand National primarily in weight, and the weight came off in places nobody would ever look: the bumper support brackets were aluminum, and so were the rear brake drums. That made the WE4 cars lighter and quicker than a standard Turbo Regal. The package also included a specific interior trim treatment, unique exterior badging, and special wheels, with a rear spoiler available only as a dealer-installed item. Also on the table was a black-out interior option that added roughly thirty-five dollars to the bill, which is the sort of detail that separates people who actually know these cars from people who have read about them.

The Limited Almost Nobody Talks About

The rarest Turbo Regal that is not a GNX is the Limited. Only 1,035 Turbo Regal Limited units rolled off the assembly line, making them scarcer than most enthusiasts realize, though still not as rare as the GNX. The Limiteds came with a sumptuously appointed interior including deep pile carpets and thickly padded pillow seats, and buyers could specify bench seating with a column shift. A chrome exterior trim package was a fairly common choice on these. The image of a turbocharged Buick as a stripped-out black street weapon is only half the story; a substantial number of them were ordered as plush personal luxury coupes that happened to be very fast.

Six Cylinders in a World Ruled by V8s

What makes the whole program remarkable is the engine configuration. This was a turbocharged V6 arriving at the exact moment when American performance was defined by V8 displacement, and it was beating V8s. The turbocharged 3.8-liter was making its power through boost and electronic engine management rather than cubic inches, at a time when most of Detroit was still recovering from a decade of emissions-strangled big blocks. That is why these cars developed the reputation they did, and why the phrase about a Buick embarrassing a Corvette became such a persistent part of 1980s car culture.

What McLaren Did to 547 Cars

The GNX took it further. Buick built 547 units, and rather than finishing them in-house, took them directly off the assembly line to ASC/McLaren, the joint venture between the American Sunroof Company and McLaren Engines, where the modifications were carried out. The list is substantial: a Garrett T-3 turbocharger with a ceramic impeller, blowing through an enlarged ceramic and aluminum intercooler, a reprogrammed 200-4R Turbo Hydra-Matic transmission with a custom torque converter, and a low-restriction dual exhaust system. Inside, the GNX carried a serial number on the dash and its own specific instrument cluster with analog Stewart-Warner gauges, including a turbo boost gauge. The sticker price was $29,900, which in 1987 was serious money for a Buick.

The Panhard Bar Only GNX Owners Got

The chassis modification that gets overlooked is the panhard bar, mounted with a specific differential cover. The panhard bar changes the suspension geometry to improve traction under hard acceleration, and it was uniquely GNX equipment. That single component says more about the seriousness of the program than the turbocharger does, because it addresses the actual limiting factor on a rear-drive car making that much torque. Externally the GNX added vents in each front fender, 16-inch black mesh wheels, and VR-rated high-speed tires, while the factory exterior logos and other markings were removed entirely.

The Horsepower Number Nobody Believed

The published numbers were 245 horsepower, or 183 kW, and 360 lb-ft of torque, and essentially nobody in the industry believed them. The performance figures give the game away: the GNX ran a standing quarter mile in 13.2 seconds at 104 mph, roughly 167 km/h, and went from 0 to 60 mph in 4.3 seconds. Those are not 245-horsepower numbers by any measurement, and the understating was widely understood at the time to be a matter of insurance classification and internal General Motors politics rather than engineering modesty.

Prototype 001 and the Darth Vader Nickname

The legacy is unusually well preserved for a car this fast. Prototype GNX number 001 is still owned by Buick and appears at events around the United States, which is rarer than it sounds, since most manufacturers sold off or lost their significant prototypes decades ago. The cars themselves acquired the nickname Darth Vader car, a reference to the uniformly black paint and menacing presence, and it has stuck so thoroughly that it is now the most common way to describe them.

Why 1987 Was the End of the Line

What makes the 1987 cars valuable today is the closing of a door. Buick would not build anything like this again, the Regal platform moved to front-wheel drive immediately afterward, and the turbocharged V6 performance formula did not return to the division. A 1987 Grand National is desirable, a documented WE4 more so, a Turbo Regal Limited scarcer than either, and a numbered GNX is a blue-chip collectible with an established auction record. All four came from the same assembly line in the same twelve months, and none of them exist because Buick planned a farewell tour. They exist because a small group of engineers kept pushing a program the corporation had largely stopped paying attention to.

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